I direct him where to find it and he takes it upon himself to save the tomato situation while I continue my chopping. From here, making dinner goes back to being the simple, satisfying task of preparing a meal together and all chit chat is limited to being just that. Chit chat. We cover basics, family members and dynamics (we’re both middle children, though he has brothers and sisters while I was the only girl with all brothers). Favorite teachers (I adored my second-grade math teacher, Knox was impacted most by his junior year humanities teacher). Subjects we loved in school (not surprisingly, English and music). Subjects we hated (also, not so surprising, chemistry and trigonometry – we both agree, it’s a left-brain right-brain issue). We talk about hobbies we grew out of (horseback riding and basketball) and habits we cultivated until they became lifestyle (yoga and surfing. Also, coffee. For both of us. As well as writing.). By the time we’re sitting down to dinner with Sloan, I feel like we’ve filled in some of the gaps between us my brain was struggling with seeing empty while my heart has felt so full.
“Do we have plans tomorrow?” Sloan asks, just as she’s digging in.
“You mean other than school, work and dance?” Tomorrow is Monday and we like to jump into our week all at once. Well, we don’t really like it, but that is how our schedule tends to play out. Or, it has for the last four years now, ever since she stepped up her dancing game and joined the studio’s company dancers to add Monday night rehearsals and regular performances to our lineup.
“I kind of thought maybe we could take off from the regular stuff,” she says casually, like I won’t notice the real objective here is getting out of doing her schoolwork.
“Why would we do that?”
“Because Knox is here,” she points out with a level of importance a little too extra to be taken seriously. “We should do something fun.”
“If you plan on taking the day off to do fun things any time I’m around, you’re not going to get a lot of school done,” Knox informs her, grinning at her efforts.
“I would be totally fine with that,” she says, reaching for the plate of cheesy garlic bread at the center of the table.
“Gracious of you to be willing to make such sacrifices,” I tell her dryly, “but no, we’re not taking the day off. If Knox wants to hang around, he’ll have to learn to entertain himself.” I purposely avoid looking at him while I say it. We’re making a lot of weird assumptions here about things we haven’t actually talked about.
Sure, he’s made it clear he’s hanging around. But, even if he means for this thing between us to become a long-term thing, he can’t literally continue hanging around indefinitely. For starters, he lives in another state. And more pressingly, he’s in the middle of a tour he just happens to have a few days off from. The truth is, I have no idea how long he plans on staying. For all I know, he’s got a car coming to whisk him away to catch up with the band again after dinner.
“I actually have work to do, too.”
Not the answer I was expecting. Maybe expecting is the wrong word. Not an answer I could have made up on my own. And I’m a writer. Of a blog. I consider people’s possible questions and come up with new answers all the time.
“You do?”
He nods. “Yeah. With the new album coming out, the label has me booked for all kinds of promotional shit on my off days. Most of it’s virtual these days, and I’ve got a few phone interviews with a couple of radio shows, but I still gotta carve out that time to do it.”
Sloan twitches her mouth back and forth the way she does when she’s trying not to frown. “Are you working on Tuesday, too?”
Tuesday. That’s two days from now. It doesn’t sound like much, but in terms of my relationship with Knox, it sounds like an eternity from now.
“I think I have a radio thing in the morning, but it’s early. Why? What’s happening Tuesday?” He eyes her curiously, a smile already curving the left corner of his mouth in anticipation of what she’s about to share.
Sloan looks suddenly shy, something she’s hardly ever and I instantly know what she’s about to ask. My heart pounds in my chest on her behalf. Maybe on my own as well. “Our dance group is performing on Tuesday night. We’re part of this big recital with other studios. We do it every year to share dance with the community. Anyway, our group has a few numbers in it and,” she pauses, working her way up to the reason she’s making this request, “I kind of have this solo and I was wondering if you’d want to come and watch.”
I literally stop breathing. Her father has missed the last two big recitals she was in, and only barely made it to a production she was cast in at the local theater over the summer, for which she performed three consecutive weekends in a row, ample opportunity for him to attend, and yet he left her hanging until the second to last show, repeatedly promising to be there but not showing until she stopped expecting him to.
This time, she hasn’t invited him. Hasn’t even mentioned the solo to him.
“Hell yeah, I want to come watch,” Knox exclaims, lighting her face up instantly. “No way am I missing a solo! Damn girl, check you out. Rising star over here sitting right next to me at the table and no one told me.” He chuckles, laying on the charm as she soaks it all up. She’s needed this, to have someone make such a big deal out of her. I do it, but somehow, it’s lost some of its effect over the years. Maybe because she knows I’m biased. Or maybe it’s not so much that my efforts are less worthy and just that her father’s have been so absent.
Either way, I’m struggling not to choke on the lump of feelings rising in my throat, at the sight of their interactions.
“When do you have to leave to join up with Matti and the guys for your next show?” I force out as evenly as possible. Now. Now’s the time to find out how long this magic bubble will last. Any longer and the pop could do more than just end the magic, it could break our hearts. And I may be willing to put mine on the line, but I’m not gambling with my daughter’s.
“Wednesday morning.” He sounds like he’s thought about this. Maybe even has arrangements already in place. “But then I hop on the red eye Saturday night after the show to get back by Sunday morning.”
“You already booked a flight?”
He nods, reaching for the garlic bread the same time as Sloan. A tug of war ensues. He wins. Then offers her first choice of the last few slices. “Yeah.” He returns the basket to the center of the table before he looks at me and grins. “You’re doing that thing where you look surprised that I’m doing something I told you I would do.”
“Can we take you to the airport on Wednesday?” Sloan asks, oblivious to the unspoken conversation taking place right under her nose. And I don’t hesitate to let her derail the silent exchange to a more tangible one.
“Are you asking because you’re trying to get out of school again?” A flexible schedule is obviously one of the perks of homeschooling, but I do worry on occasion, I’ve made use of the flexibility of it too many times over the years, given how frequently Sloan now attempts to divert from the regular schedule.
“No.” She smiles like she’s been busted. “But that would obviously be a convenient bonus,” she concedes before she goes on, “I just like going to the airport.”
“Like airplanes?” Knox guesses.
